Frozen Dreams
by Victoria Hughes
Summary: [Indefinite Hiatus]It's just another assignment, comeplete with attempts on Ed's life, kidnappings, and twisted plots and Ed's caught himself a cold. Full Metal Alchemist plotfic.
1. a faded place

It was the sort of day, Ed thought, that he wanted to be curled up in the barracks with his brother, reading, with a cup of heated chocolate in his hands.

Instead, he was standing on a train platform, shoulders hunched and his hood turned up over his head, the windblown rain lashing at him, his brother beside him.

Ed hated himself for thinking it, but Al was lucky he couldn't feel this crappy weather. He stood next to his older brother like an unmoving rock, his faceplate turned towards Ed . "Brother, you'll be all right, won't you?" he said worriedly.

"Fine, fine," Ed grumped, looking up at the clock. "The damn train is late!"

"In this weather, it's not surprising," Al said mildly.

"Hmph." Al was right, he thought, but that didn't mean he couldn't be upset about it.

It was all the damn Colonel's fault, anyway; he'd come into the office to turn in his typed report from his last trip, and been handed another mission before he could even blink.

"I trust you'll be able to handle this, Fullmetal," Mustang had said as he held out the folder. "Please, keep the property damage to a minimum. Your train leaves in 45 minutes."

Ed had had a few choice words to say about then, but he held his tongue, bowed, and fumed at Al instead.

"Can't I get just one day's rest?" he demanded, crushing their tickets in his pocket without meaning to. "At this rate I'll never get a chance to research the Philosopher's Stone! No, instead I have to go all the way out to _Illuti, _on the damn _northern border_, to investigate _alchemical anomalies! _What kinda bullshit is that!?"

Al laughed, but it was a nervous, apologetic laugh – the way he laughed when he didn't want to set Ed off further. "Don't worry, brother," he said. "If we wait a few weeks longer it won't make much of a difference. Maybe the alchemical anomaly is something related to the Stone," he put in hopefully.

"I want to return you to normal as soon as possible," Ed huffed in reply, narrowing his eyes down the track. "Being a dog of the military is pointless if I can't have access to those libraries because I'm always off on some stupid mission." But he brightened slightly at the suggestion that maybe the mission would turn up information about the Stone. "Of course, if the Stone is involved, it'll be okay," he added.

Al laughed, the sound a little nervous as it echoed inside himself. "I'm more worried about you anyway," he said, then lifted his head at the sound of a distant train whistle.

"Finally!" Ed stormed, hunching his shoulders further against a particularly sharp gust of wind. He shook his fist down the track even though the train was hidden by the rain. "If you know the weather is going to delay you, you should leave early!"

"I don't think they can do that," Al laughed, rubbing the back of his head.

The train chugged into view and pulled to a stop, necessitating a run down the platform to the doorway where the trainman waved his arm at them; Ed shoved the tickets into the man's hand and stomped on board, tracking water all the way. Al followed him, and Ed could hear him apologizing for his rude older brother to the trainman and the few fellow passengers, carrying the suitcase that they – well, Ed – lived out of. Rain dripped off his shoulders and spikes.

"Damn it all," Ed snorted as he pulled down his hood; the wind had blown the rain into his hair, and he squeezed water out of his bangs as he attempted to shrug his coat off. "Soaked through." His shirt was, too, and his pants were plastered to his legs; his coat was good for keeping out the cold, but not the rain. He flung said coat over the arm of his seat and shook his arms. "I'm never going to get dry," he grumped, clapping his hands together and slamming them down on his coat.

Instantly steam rose from his coat as the water evaporated, leaving a damp smell in the train car and causing the few heads in the car to turn towards Ed. Al notified Ed of this in a tinny whisper. "Brother, they're staring."

"Let them stare," Ed snorted. He eyed his brother, and clapped his hands together again before pressing down on Al's breastplate. The thin sheen of water on Al's armor turned to steam, and Ed snatched his hands away with a yelp. "Ow! Hot hot hot—" He shook his gloved flesh hand, then snatched off his glove and pressed his hand against his own cold, soaked clothes with a sigh of relief.

Al sighed the sigh that Ed knew to mean 'Brother did something dumb again', and he narrowed his eyes at his younger brother. "Don't sigh at me like that."

But Al just handed Ed a towel from their suitcase. They'd learned the hard way that alchemy wasn't the best way to go about drying clothes if you were still in them, after all, when Ed had gone to dry his sleeve after thrusting it in a pond and ended up with a few blisters from steam burns. "Thank you," Al murmured. "Now you should get dry, too."

"Can't have you rusting," Ed snorted, taking the towel with surprising grace and laying it in his lap as the train started forward again. "… ugh." He peeled his jacket off next, and with a blush, pulled off his tank-top as well, before vigorously rubbing the towel against his damp skin. One more clap had both articles of clothing dried off, and he struggled back into them, growling his irritation when the tank-top caught on the joints of his arm. "This shit is such a pain," he grunted, smoothing the slightly damp shirt. "And my legs are still cold." His stomach growled, then, and Ed groaned. "And now I'm hungry! Why the hell couldn't the Colonel have given us enough time to go get something to eat!?"

Al made a soft noise somewhere between a laugh and something sympathetic, before he took the towel back from Ed and dropped in on his head. "Your hair is still wet," he pointed out.

"Mn." Ed tugged the tie out of his hair and let the water drip down his back for a moment, then shoved all of his hair back from his face and scrubbed at it with the towel. When the towel was soaked and his hair was relatively dry, he tossed the towel onto the opposite seat and used the hair tie to give himself a low ponytail.

Al carefully gathered up the towel as Ed flopped down on his side, cushioning his head on his coat; Ed watched Al deliberately fold up the towel and lay it aside, then sit, quiet, his armor expressionless. Ed hated it. Al never told anybody anything, and now, without even facial expressions to go by, Ed could almost never guess what was on Al's mind.

"What're you thinking about?" he asked, closing his eyes and rolling over to face the seat.

"Mm, I'm just worried about you getting sick. You didn't get any sleep last night," Al noted, his voice turning motherly, "And that on top of the last trip—"

"Well, I'm gonna get sleep now," Ed interrupted, somewhat exasperated. Truthfully, he'd been expecting to get some that night, but they'd probably arrive in Illuti at nearly midnight. He looked back over his shoulder at Al. "Don't worry about it, okay? You can't fix it."

He could hear the reluctance in Al's voice as he murmured, "Okay, brother," and it made him sigh a little as he began to drift off.

And in the end, as always, the train clacking it way down the tracks finally lulled him to sleep.

&

Illuti was a cold village, located in the mountains that provided a natural boundary between Amesteris and Drachma. Its primary export was coal; a limestone quarry was also still in active use, but the need for menial labor had recently increased as the alchemists that had formerly populated the remote town had moved a few miles south to Perth, where a steel refinery business boomed thanks to the local deposits of iron ore and coal.

This unto itself was nothing surprising or worrying; it was, rather, a sudden increase in the number of rough diamonds supposedly being mined. Naturally the government was suspicious of this and felt that it was best to have an alchemist investigate this possible alchemical crime.

Ed closed the report and looked up at the weathered sign over the train station exit: 'Welcome to Illuti'. In fact, nearly everything looked faded, as if it had once been painted brightly but not maintained. Al wandered a few steps ahead of his brother, the breeze tugging at his hair tassel. "Look, the lights are on over there," he said, pointing.

Ed squinted through the thin fog in that direction, unable to make out the sign swinging over the lit windows. "It's probably an inn. Let's go." He dropped the report back in his half-open suitcase, crouched to shut it, and swung it over his shoulder before starting off; Al clanged behind him, following.

The road was paved with limestone, likely from the quarry; there were no streetlights. A place like this probably didn't have a very extensive electric grid, after all, and Ed wondered how they generated electricity in the first place. Windmills? Maybe there was a waterfall around here ...

The sounds of carousing and a piano being played grew as they approached. Ed still had to squint to make out the sign, faded as it was: The Last Stop. "Encouraging," he grumbled, pushing the door open before Al could say anything.

If the noise had been notable outside the inn/tavern/barroom, it was a din inside. A bar was across the far back wall, alcohol of all sorts lining the shelves; almost all the tables were full up with men, young and old, singing a drinking tune to the song being banged out on the piano. It was loud enough and busy enough that Ed was able to enter without any apparent immediate attention, but when Al clanged through the door, a couple of the ones closer to the entrance turned their heads. "Hey, look, a guy in armor!"

"What're you wearing that heavy stuff for? Take it off, siddown, have a drink!" One of the men held up his beer glass, gesturing them over. "The short kid in the coat, too, you can both—"

Al drew his breath and glanced at his brother. A vein pulsed on Ed's forehead.

"WHO'RE YOU CALLING THE SIZE OF A PEA!?"

The piano music faltered at the scream, and quite suddenly they had _everyone's _attention. Ed, who had been about to attack his insulter bodily, stared up at the crowd of eyes blinking in his direction.

Al jumped in, taking a step forward to draw a little in front of his brother. "Ah, hello everyone," He bowed. "We're travelers from out of town, and we'd hoped you would have a place for us to stay the night?"

Ed relaxed marginally, nodding his head at the crowd just before the tall, rotund man behind the rail guffawed. "Hey, hey, come on in, then! We've got plenty of rooms, too many, really – siddown, get something to drink, I'll get you some keys! Kilik, give us some music again!" And with that, the young man at the piano began to bang out another tune and soon the Elric brothers were forgotten again in the crowd and noise.

Ed slithered through the crowd, elbowing people out of his way when they wouldn't let him slide by; Al picked along behind him, excusing himself every other step, until they finally squeezed themselves into a couple of seats at the bar. "Sure is lively," Ed observed the obvious over the din; the bartender (and evidently also the inn manager) slapped down a set of keys in front of them and grinned, nodding.

"We're busy just about every night – best beer in town, you know! – and today's payday for the miners," he answered, filling up two beers from the tap. "We've been doing pretty damn well lately – found some diamonds! Pay's up, spirits are up, hell, _tourism's _up, if you guys are any indication!" He laughed, shoving the beers towards the brothers.

Ed eyed the drink uncomfortably and pushed it back towards the bartender. "I'll just take juice if you have it," he said, glancing up at Al; Al cocked his head slightly at the drink as if unsure just how to approach the issue.

Ed could've sworn the bartender smirked at him then. "Still a kid, huh?" he remarked, taking the beer back. "Here, Tym, take this to Verdan!"

The elder Elric began a slow burn in his seat; again Al jumped to the rescue while the bartender poured Ed some cranberry juice. "Illuti was a tourist town?" he asked, evidently deciding to just ignore the beer at his elbow.

"Eh, that was years ago," the bartender nodded. "We got some beautiful caves around here – a carnival set up nearby, people'd bring their kids and look at the caves before riding the rides, and we'd get people staying up here a bit." He sighed. "That was before … eh, never mind, it's before your time," he shrugged and pushed the cranberry juice towards Ed. "Not many people remember it, I was just barely twenty myself …"

Ed dipped a straw into the cranberry juice and sipped a little. "This city was part of Drachma, then?" he asked, recalling the report in his suitcase.

The bartender stilled a moment, then laughed again, but not as cheerfully as before. "Hahaha, you do your research, don't you, kid!? Yeah, yeah, we were part of Drachma till we were annexed by Amestris – nearly went to war over it then, too," he seemed to think aloud.

"Too?" Ed asked, thinly. He wished the bartender would stop calling him 'kid'. He wondered if maybe he should call him 'big fat man' and see if he persisted, but Al would have scolded him and he didn't need that for his public image.

The man didn't seem to realize he'd spoken aloud, though, and he waved it off with a smile. "Eh, just muttering to myself," he dismissed it. Then he guffawed again, for no apparent reason. "The room'll be 20,000 a night, plus breakfast in the morning," he told them heartily.

"Kind of expensive," Ed grumbled, reaching for his pocketbook. "But everywhere else is about the same, isn't it?"

"We're the cheapest," the bartender announced. "Gotta make the ones that do come pay enough to keep this place up. It's not too bad. Just pay on a night-to-night basis, all right? And I'm not charging for the juice," he winked. Ed glared at him.

The bartender/manager took the money as Ed laid it out on the table. "Okay, then, I'll be right back with you folks – name's Hale. If you need my attention, just shout," he grinned, and then Hale was off to the other end of the bar, greeting other guests.

Ed watched him go, gulping down some more juice. The space between his shoulders ached, his spine ached, and his knee ached … he sat up and arched his back in an attempt to stretch the soreness out. "Well, that guy's kind of bitter," he observed.

"What do you mean, brother?" Al was gazing after the bartender as well.

"You heard him when he talked about Amestris and Drachma," Ed grunted, and relaxed again, leaning over the counter. It was marginally better. "The guy still thinks he's Drachminian. And he's probably not the only one," he added in a low voice.

"Mm," Al made a thoughtful noise of assent, and Ed sighed. There wasn't much in the file about the annexation – it was just the usual background information, what military force was available, that sort of thing. But it had been about twenty years ago … plenty of the guys here were over twenty. And if it had bred resentment that spanned that long …

"Anyway," he added, reaching back and rubbing his neck under his braid, "It's not really our business." He drained the last of the juice in one long pull on the straw and reached into his back pocket again. "What time is it …?" He pulled out his watch and flipped it open, turned away from Al. Almost one o'clock in the morning. "We should turn in," he started to tell Al, flipping the watch closed again.

"Nice watch," said the man next to Ed. Ed grunted his assent, not really paying attention. "Can I see it?" he added.

"No," Ed started to say, looking up at the man – and then he saw his expression.

"You're a National Alchemist?" the man asked, his tongue curling around the title as if it tasted bad, and it was as if he'd spoken the magic words; Hale turned to stare at him, and then other patrons did, the word 'National Alchemist' being whispered down the rows and ranks of drinking miners. The building went quiet again, but this time with hostile expectation.

"… You know," said Hale, sounding much less jovial than before, "you never did tell us why you're here."

There was no use lying; they would have found out the next day, anyway. "I'm here to examine the mines," Ed admitted coolly, getting to his feet. "There's some doubt the diamonds are genuine."

"So you're here to steal what our hard work brought us?" Kilik demanded from where he sat behind the piano, and there was a chorus of agreement. Ed opened his mouth to reply, but Hale was on him next.

"Leading us on like that, letting us think we'd finally struck it big," he spat. "Get out. I'll not have thieves staying in my inn!"

Immediately there were bellows of heckling. Ed pinched the bridge of his nose. At least they weren't throwing stuff. A couple of the men nearest him and Al stood up; Al stood with them, standing close to Ed. "Brother," he said urgently.

"I know," Ed sighed. He held out his hand to Hale. "At least give me back the money for the night," he demanded with a scowl.

Hale smiled crookedly and bitterly. "It's the least you can donate to us in light of everything you military types have taken," he said, and then the two men on either side of him were pushing him out the door.

"Al, grab the suitcase," Ed called – and then he was being shoved back out into the street. He stumbled a few steps and turned to see Al clanging out the door after him. "That money is _mine_, not the—" the door slammed. "—military's. Damn it," he snarled, kicking the side of the building viciously.

He glared at the door while there were curses and shouts and finally laughter before the music started up again, and his presence was evidently put from their minds. The anger subsided like a tide, still burning but overcome with weary resignation; this was his punishment, and a symptom of being a dog of the military, after all. He turned to see Al standing there silently, suitcase in hand, waiting for his older brother's tantrum to be over. "… come on," Ed sighed, gesturing for Al to follow him. "We're gonna go find someplace to get some sleep."

Al leaned forward as if he wanted to say something; Ed cocked an eyebrow at him. "What?"

"Nothing," Al shook his head, evidently changing his mind. "We should find someplace that's sheltered from the wind, though. And be careful not to sleep with your stomach exposed," he added in an exasperated tone.

Ed rolled his eyes; Al was always complaining about that, but it was the last thing on Ed's mind at the moment. In fact, what _was_ on his mind was a small mining town called Youswell. Did the military go out of its way to antagonize miners regularly? "I'll try, okay? Let's go." He turned away, and they clanked off through the fog.

&

Ed woke up the next morning curled under a blanket, his head nestled between Al's thigh and the grassy knoll they had selected the night before. "… Al?" he asked, his voice scratchy. Damn it all, now his throat hurt. A drink of water would probably take care of that.

"I'm awake," Al said over Ed's head somewhere. Ed blinked slowly, and lifted an hand to rub his eyes, slowly sitting up. The blanket fell into his lap. "Ugh …"

It was morning; the sun beamed down on them both, warming Al's armor, but the air was still slightly chill. Al snickered. "There's grass in your hair," he explained at Ed's disgruntled look; Ed snorted, and finger-combed his hair, but Al shook his head. "Let me get it for you." He plucked at Ed's bangs, freeing pieces of grass.

Ed sat still for the treatment. "I didn't sleep with my stomach exposed," he pointed out, but Al shook his head again.

"You pushed your shirt up like always, brother, I pushed it back down for you," he explained. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well enough," Ed grunted, stretching; his _chest _ached, and his sides and back, straight through to his calf – possibly from sleeping on the ground, but it didn't really _feel _like that kind of ache. He cleared his throat.

He didn't bother to ask Al if he'd slept well; the answer was always the same – 'Fine, brother' – and Ed didn't know if he was lying or even if Al slept at all. It seemed unbearably horrible, to be bound to a suit of armor and unable to even dream some of that time away …

He couldn't think about this right now. Ed scrambled for a way to distract himself. "Gonna go find a stream," he remarked, tossing the blanket in the general direction of their suitcase and getting to his feet stiffly.

"What for?" Al started to stand with him, going over to the blanket and folding it.

"Water," Ed answered bluntly, clearing his throat again. Damn, his throat hurt! He skittered down the side of the hill and listened for a moment – he'd heard running water when they'd come this way the night before – and he followed the narrow road right a short ways before he found what amounted to a mountainside brook. Good enough. He scooped up the ice-cold water with his hands and drank; it didn't quite relieve his sore throat, but he felt better at least. He splashed the water on his face and neck, rubbing his eyes, and hoped he looked better than he felt.

"Here." Al had followed him; the towel they carried was held out to Ed. Ed took it gratefully and scrubbed his face and neck dry. "Feel better?"

"A little." Ed had no idea how Al had picked up on the fact he didn't feel well; Al was just observant like that, he supposed. He folded the towel in his hands and handed it back to Al thoughtfully.

That was when his stomach growled. Ed blushed; Al made a noise that told Ed he shared Ed's embarrassment. Ed growled. "Geez …" he stalked past Al and considered a patch of the wild grass they had slept in the night before; he clapped his hands together and pressed them to the stalks, and in the smoke of the aftermath of reaction, a loaf of bread sat. Ed picked it up, broke it open, found it satisfactory, and wolfed it down, starting down the street. "C'mn, Al, weff godda go do da menns," he mumbled through a mouthful of bread.

Al was either a good listener or altogether too familiar with Ed's full-mouth dialect – probably both – but he followed Ed, walking behind him at his shoulder. "Do you think the townsfolk will let you in to inspect the mines?" he asked worriedly. "If something happens …"

"Nothing's gonna happen," Ed swallowed before answering this time. "And they'll have to let me in. There's a military base only about a mile down the road, and I can call them out any time I need them. They know it, too," he observed grimly as they crossed back into town. The last three National Alchemists to be sent to the town had brought down the local authorities on the townsfolk, after all, according to the file.

"You don't really mean to …" Al's voice faltered; Ed hunched his shoulders slightly.

"It's a last resort," he confessed. Getting military members involved usually got messy; it was simply introducing too many hostile figures to one another, which inevitably ended in injuries and occasionally death. Ed considered himself lucky to not have yet been party to any fatalities, but both brothers had heard the horror stories.

They traversed most of the way to the mines, which were located about a quarter-mile from the main part of town and higher up the side of the mountain, in relative silence; Ed periodically cleared his throat and rubbed his flesh shoulder. The ache wasn't going away.

The noise of shouting men and winches was audible some distance away, but Al was the first one to spot the shaft tower. "Brother, it's just around the bend," he pointed out the visible point of the tower, and Ed grunted his acknowledgement. They came around the corner and found sooty-faced men hard at work lifting carts of coal out of vertical shafts, pushing carts out of a mining cave, others disappearing underground with pickaxes and torches and other mining equipment. Bells rang to call men to the winches to collect coal; a cage was filled with canaries, and a child was feeding them.

"Hey, look, it's the alchemist," someone said as Ed walked resolutely into the middle of the mining camp, his brother following behind him with some trepidation. Slowly, the busy camp ground to a halt, everyone stopping to look at Edward.

"We didn't think you'd have the guts to show up," a bearded man said contemptuously, his blue eyes dark with anger.

Ed pressed his lips together, and crossed his arms. "I'm here to do my job." Instantly there were jeers, snarls, shouts for him to go home; Ed waited for them to drop to a level he could shout over, going red in the face from frustration. Damn it; Ed was willing to bet that Mustang _knew _how bad public sentiment was when he'd sent Ed this way. The man was such a sadistic bastard—

He cleared his throat as the shouts died to expectant silence. "I haven't made any judgment yet as to whether the diamonds are transmuted or not," he said, and the bearded man retorted.

"You see any alchemists here? You think that's why we're working so _damn _hard to do this manually!? Of course they're genuine! You're just here to take them with whatever excuse you can come up with, you son of a—"

"Don't jump to conclusions!" Ed snapped. "I haven't seen anything yet, I can't just decide here and now because you say so. If you don't let me go I'll just presume they _are _manufactured, and then I'll take them as contraband. If you're right then you've got nothing to hide, do you?" he pressed.

There was some muttered curses as the miners shifted uneasily. Then another black-faced miner – Ed recognized him, after a moment, as the piano-player Kilik – shrugged, stepping forward. "What the hell, let him down into the mines," he said, and there was instantly a shift of disfavor towards him. "We know they're real, right? He's not gonna find anything out of the ordinary. We might as well let him down."

There was a pause, and the decision-making seemed to fall to the bearded man, who let out a heavy sigh. "Fine," he grunted. "Let him down the shaft for today. Kilik, get a canary, Tym, you take them down. Stop work on the shaft. How long're you gonna need, alchemist?" he asked, contempt dripping from his tone.

"Depends on how extensive the passages are," Ed shrugged. "Of course I won't dawdle, but it could be all day."

"Go as fast as you can. You're losing us money," the bearded man snapped. "Back to work, people! Get the men out of the shaft, give the alchemist his room!" And with that the chaos of the mine slowly resumed.

At least it was a step in the right direction. "Come on, Al," he said, brushing past the man and moving towards the canary cage, where Kilik was removing a canary and placing it gently in a small handheld cage.

"Here," Kilik shoved the cage into Ed's hands. "If the canary drops dead, you're on the right track." Ed shot him a glare.

Another young man – presumably Tym – was crossing the wary crowd; he exchanged a look with Kilik, then pointed away from the shaft Ed had expected, towards another nearby tower. "This is the shaft for people; it's a little lighter in design," he said. "It's winch-operated; Kilik and I are going to lower you down and you'll have the whole shaft to yourself. I hope you know what a normal diamond deposit looks like."

"I'm going with him," Al announced.

Kilik laughed. "You're not gonna fit in that armor," he smirked. "Take it off, and maybe you'll be light enough for us to lower you down."

Al shifted uneasily; Ed blanched. "I'll go as quickly as I can," Ed assured Al hastily. Al sighed; he didn't sound impressed.

Kilik didn't seem to be in a mood to wait. "Come on, we've both got better things to do," he pushed; Ed pursed his lips, and just to be contrary took his time walking to the shaft. Al followed gamely behind.

At the shaft, Tym called Ed's attention to the bell. "This is attached to a rope at the bottom of the shaft – just pull the rope and the bell will ring, and we'll come pull you back up. And here's a lantern, too." He pushed the heavy candle-based lantern into Ed's free hand; the canary twittered away in its cage in his other hand. "Step right in." He gestured to the wooden platform of the lift.

"Be careful," Al warned in his usual way; Ed sent him a fond grin of confidence and stepped into the lift, and braced himself when the platform shook slightly with the first moving of the winch. Then he was being carefully lowered, the platform sturdily held by the wooden frame of the shaft.

It wasn't long before he could only see by the light of the lantern, which was cleverly designed to amplify the light of the candle and give the user a useful radius of sight. It was still vaguely claustrophobic, but Edward was no stranger to this kind of thing; he'd been down in mines more than once.

He wandered forward; the silence would have been deafening, but the canary twittered away in its cage, reassuring Ed that he was still alive and kicking, and Ed followed the wall of the mine down to one narrow passage leading off the small 'room' created around the shaft.

Ed followed the passage down, and forward, until he was hunching just to keep following the passage. He put down the canary cage and ran his hand over the un-mined coal ore thoughtfully.

Rough diamond wouldn't glitter, of course – it was amazing to think, if one saw a rough diamond, that someone had seen the stone and thought it could be a precious item. If they had, in fact, come across a diamond deposit, the strains of it would come from downstream – that is, further down the mountain – than the main deposit, which meant that the coal mines themselves would probably be filled crossways with the occasional rough diamond ore. There was nothing down this passage, but it seemed like it was still being widened for proper mining. Edward carefully scooted out from his hunched place against the wall, picking the cage up again, and made his way back up the passage to look for another.

The second passage was wider, but didn't offer any evidence of a deposit; the third was wider still, and Edward had to hold his lantern high to see the upper corners of the wall and ceiling. The coal dust still floating in the air started to irritate Ed's already burning throat after a while. Edward coughed against it, more and more frequently, until he was holding his breath to keep from coughing. Still, nothing; but there were a couple more passages to examine, and the canary still cheerfully sang..

Edward was still looking for the end of the third passage when he noticed the lantern's candle was burning low. He sighed – how long had he been down there, anyway? – and turned to go back up the passage to the shaft.

Sure enough, there was the rope for the bell. Ed stepped onto the lift and yanked the rope, looking up the long passage to the light above.

There was no response.

Ed jerked the rope a couple more times and listened for the ring, holding his breath; he heard nothing, and he had to bend over for a short coughing fit. "Hey!" he shouted as soon as he'd caught his breath. "Hey, come and get me! Al!? Anyone up there!?"

There wasn't any response, but Ed wasn't sure he could be heard all the way up the shaft. Al, at least, would have responded, and he wouldn't have left … unless …

Damn it, was everything okay up there? "HEY!" he shouted again. If no one answered soon, he was going to transmute himself a tower all the way up the shaft and just ride the tower back to the surface.

He heard something rumble.

Something blocked the light at the top of the tower – Edward heard someone yelling, but he couldn't quite make out the words. "What!?" he screamed back, but the shouting continued as if he hadn't spoken, and then he heard the rumble again. Ed squinted at the figure.

One of the wooden supports of the lift cracked. Ed started, and stared at the splintering wood; he dropped the canary and the lantern both and clapped his hands together and pressed them to the wood, restoring it instantly, but something broke further up the same support, and wood splinters showered down on Ed. Then the support next to it cracked, and dirt and small rocks fell from higher up the shaft.

Edward didn't understand the workings of the shaft itself well enough to repair it. He scrambled off the lift, saving the lantern at the last second, as the platform and the canary were buried under a small pile of rubble, and then one of the supports folded outward before Ed's eyes with a loud _crack_. The rumble, much louder, started again, and the shafted folded in on itself in a roar of earth and stone and a rush of wind. Edward grimaced, clapping a hand over his mouth and shielding his head from the flying stone with his automail arm.

The lantern fell over, sputtered, and died, and the collapsed mine was silent.

_to be continued_


	2. a dark place

Al watched anxiously as his brother was lowered into the shaft, and then there was nothing he could do but wait.

Kilik immediately took off for another part of the grounds, shooting Al a dirty look as if his hatred for Ed's title extended to Al's very presence. Tym stayed behind to check the rigs and lock the winch; Al watched with interest as ropes were looped and a bolt catch set in place.

"So the alchemist is your brother?" Tym asked after a stretch. Al nodded. "What about you, you an alchemist too?"

"Yes – but not a National Alchemist," Al hastened to add. No need to further antagonize these people.

Tym shook his head slowly. "What possessed … have you told your brother he's a fool? How can you possibly respect him after … why do you follow him around?" he finally demanded, unable to settle on a question.

Al sighed, his voice echoing, and looked down at the man who was probably a good decade older than himself, and thought that he looked more hurt than angry. It only followed, he supposed; the military often took rather than gave, and National Alchemists had earned their reputation through more than just the Civil War. "I follow him because he's my brother," he said at length. Was more explanation than that needed?

Tym just looked at him for a long moment. "Ah," he said eventually before checking the bell rope.

Al resisted the urge to sigh again. Why couldn't Ed ever try to soften the impact of his arrival? But of course, he wouldn't – he didn't believe in 'soft' any more, and he liked the truth in strong, large doses – liked delivering it that way, too. "You seem to be very resentful of National Alchemists," he stated obviously, hoping to draw some reasoning out of Tym. He seemed amiable enough, at least when compared with Kilik.

"Why shouldn't we be?" Tym said testily. He crossed his arms and gave Al's armor a cool, considering look. "Three of them in as many years, for coal, for gold, for diamonds, and all of them found fault in our deposits without reason! They insist on staying without paying, and when we refuse them anything we immediately have the military post up the road breathing down our necks." He scrubbed his sooty face with an equally sooty hand. "Sometimes there are visitors, from Perth and the like, and they say that the alchemists don't treat them the way they treat us. It's as though they're punishing us for … I don't know," he trailed off. "Hale is half-waiting to be arrested still," he added as if his mind had wandered.

"My brother didn't call the military," Alphonse said softly. What would these people be punished for? Did he think they were being punished for being Drachminian? It was probably nothing, but Al decided he'd make sure to tell his brother.

Tym raised his eyebrows. "He didn't?" There was skepticism in his voice, and Al nodded. "… huh," he said, thoughtfully. "Why not? Is he planning on springing something on us later?"

"Brother's not like that," Al shook his head.

Tym gave Al a long, uncertain look before his gaze shifted beyond Al. "Ah, I don't have time to be standing around waiting for the alchemist to finish up," he sighed. "Call if the bell rings. Don't try to move the winch yourself, it's easy to tangle," he warned.

"I won't," Al promised, watching as Tym rapped the winch with his knuckles. Then, with a small, unemotional wave, he hustled past Al and towards a clump of miners moving into one of the mine entrances cut into the rock face.

And with that, Al sat down to wait.

&

Two hours passed, and in that time the miners finally stopped staring at the suit of armor seated in front of the silent mine shaft; finally, Al seemed to be forgotten altogether. Al didn't mind being stared at so much any more, although it made him a bit uncomfortable. It was better to not think about it.

He watched as the miners came in and out of the shafts, sat down to eat, laughed and talked and enjoyed each other's company. Kilik had reappeared; he was speaking with the bearded headmaster of the mines, and they were laughing over something when Al heard his armor being tapped. He looked down at his thigh, and found the little girl who had been feeding the canaries earlier. She beamed up at him, and rapped her knuckles on his thigh again. "It sounds funny," she said cheerfully.

"I suppose it does," Al agreed. "What's your name?"

"I'm Susanna. You can call me Suzy. I like flowers and birdies the best, that's why Daddy lets me come up and feed the birdies in the cage," she said, pointing. "Daddy says it's not good to let them out though, or I'd let you play with them. You look bored."

"I'm not," Al wanted to smile, so he reached out gently pat her reassuringly on the head. "I'm just waiting for –"

The bell clanged.

"Ah, brother!" Al stood, taking care not to hit Suzy with his knee; Suzy backed off, eyes wide as she seemed to realize just how tall Al was. "Excuse me, anyone? My brother is ringing--!" He pointed at the shaft.

The bell clanged again, and Kilik looked up, getting up from where he was sitting with the others and approaching Al. "I hear it, I hear it," he grumbled, nodding at one of the other miners. "Tym's still down the other shaft, so I'll—"

The ground seemed to shift slightly – there was a soft sound like a distant explosion and a low rumble from the direction of the shaft Ed was down.

"What was that?" Al asked sharply; Kilik blinked, and he ignored Al, going to the shaft.

"Daddy!" Suzy went running towards the bearded headman. "Daddy, there was a rumble!"

"Stand clear!" Kilik shouted from where he hung over the edge of the shaft. "Do not come over here! Stand clear! Alchemist, get away from the opening!" he screamed down the shaft.

"Kilik, get back!" the headmaster shouted, picking up the little girl who was evidently his daughter. There were shouts and cries, but Alphonse took no notice.

"Brother!" Al pounded towards Kilik.

"Don't go over there!" Suzy called after him just as the ground shook under Al's feet; Al stumbled. Kilik tottered back from the shaft, and the ground he had been standing on caved away. The shaft fixtures began to tilt; the wood splintered.

"Don't come closer!" Kilik ordered, stumbling towards Al and grabbing his arm; Al regained his footing and took another step towards the shaft despite Kilik pulling him the other way.

"My brother is down there!"

"There is nothing you can do!" Kilik snapped. And indeed, the ground was trembling and collapsing, the shaft caving in on itself. For an instant Al thought of alchemy – anything – but he didn't know how the shaft was made, didn't know the structure and layers of the falling earth, and if he did something he could make it worse instead of better—

The ground under his feet shook again, and he fell backwards, almost rolling over Kilik; Suzy screamed, a piercing sound, and with snaps and a loud groan, the shaft finally collapsed inward and came to a dusty rest.

Al rolled to his knees and staggered to his feet. "Brother!" he called uselessly.

"He was directly under the shaft when it collapsed. There's nothing we can do." Al whirled to look at Kilik, who was coughing out this explanation as he regained his feet.

"Surely there is some way to—"

"He cannot possibly have survived!"

Al sharply fell silent; Kilik looked up at him with cool, unremorseful eyes, and Al felt something within himself steel in anger. "I cannot believe that," he said softly.

"The shaft is utterly collapsed," said the headmaster's gruff voice, and Al looked over to him. He was clutching his daughter with white knuckles, and his breathing was fast; his face was pale. "We should be grateful that there weren't more men down there."

Finally Al looked up; the miners were again assembled, this time in horrified awe rather than in anger. He turned back to the headmaster. "What could have caused this?" he asked in a low voice.

The headmaster's eyes dropped away. "Unstable supports, a small quake; any number of things … they are not as uncommon as we would like them to be," he murmured.

Al glanced back at Kilik, and a dark thought crossed his mind. This one was too convenient. "If it was one of your own men trapped down there, would you at least try to ascertain that he had died?" he asked. "Isn't there some way to see if—"

"We're better off with the National Alchemist dead!" The voice came from somewhere in the crowd, and Al looked up sharply. There was no cry of agreement but there were a few murmurs of assent.

Al looked back to the headmaster. "If he is alive down there, he'll die a horrible, slow death!"

"… We cannot afford to be set back," the headmaster said after a moment. "We simply don't have the time or the manpower—"

"You can't just leave him!"

"And if he is dead? We cannot spend days attempting to rebuild a shaft on unstable ground just to find a body!" The headmaster's voice grew sharp, and Suzy, who had been watching silently, flinched.

"Daddy!"

The headmaster grimaced, and Kilik seemed to step in for him. "Sir, surely you can understand that this is a difficult decision, but the only decision we can make."

Al straightened, and stepped forward, until his breastplate was less than a foot away from Kilik's nose. He knew this body could be threatening, and he used it to his advantage from time to time; now, the clock was ticking on his brother's life, and he could not afford to argue with these men. "Very well," he said softly, looking down into Kilik's hardened blue eyes. "Then please, give me only one thing."

"What is that?" Kilik asked, his tone guarded.

"A map."

&

Cave darkness is something that the mind cannot imagine. It is something that must be experienced before it can be understood, an inky blackness so complete that it is impossible to see fingers waggling mere inches from one's eyes. Truly it is not so hard to see why cave-dwelling creatures are blind; the eyes are so useless that they deteriorate rapidly in such conditions.

As the dust settled, Edward's coughing fit brought on by said dust finally began to taper off. He lowered his metal arm to find himself wrapped in the utter dark. His flesh shoulder ached sharply. He stood still for a moment, then sank slowly to his knees. The first thing to do, naturally, was find the lantern.

Although Ed had a general idea of where the lantern had skittered off to, it seemed silly to stumble through the dark in search of it. He had an idea from the Colonel, anyway, that he'd been meaning to try out. He clapped his hands together, then snapped his automail thumb and finger against each other; there was a brief spark of light, and then alchemical reaction, and in a sudden gout of flame the coal mine was lit brightly. Ed's eyes fell on the lamp – there, only a few feet away – and then the flame, sustained only by the oxygen Edward had gathered with alchemy, promptly died. The afterimage burned against the darkness. Ed crawled forward, fingers reaching blindly for the metal edge of the lantern, until he felt it; he fumbled with it until he found the catch to open it, and he carefully set it upright on the ground and slipped his automail hand inside, feeling out the wick. Again he snapped his fingers, and another spark flashed, this time lighting the wick inside, and the lantern burned forth again. Ed sighed with relief. A prolonged stay in cave darkness was said to drive men mad; Edward supposed, darkly, that he didn't need the darkness' help.

He got to his feet after a bit, his flesh knee protesting the movement, and Ed closed his eyes against a momentary dizziness. He didn't need this right now. He lifted the lantern high and looked over the rubble that had once been the mine shaft.

It was hopeless. The shaft had completely collapsed, leaving a pile of earth that seemed to be supporting what was left of the ceiling of the mining cave. Ed could just imagine what would happen if he tried to recreate the shaft; the rest of the earth would probably finish caving in, and Ed would be crushed underneath it. It was, unquestionably, time to move on. But first, Ed was going to have to find a way to make his light last longer; the oil lantern wouldn't last more than 90 minutes.

Ed picked through the pile of stone and earth, freeing two long, large pieces of wood, and slid down the side to sit on the ground with the lantern, wheezing. He peeled off one of his gloves - now a dirty gray-black from all the soot - and tore it apart at the seams. Balling the two halves of the torn glove, he opened the lantern and dipped the material in the dwindling oil lightly; slowly the oil soaked the cloth, and Ed transmuted the material into the splintered ends of the wooden sticks, creating two makeshift torches. He'd reduced the life of the lantern, but hopefully lengthened how long he'd have light. Gathering up his new materials, he hoisted the lantern and started down the third tunnel - the one he hadn't finished exploring.

With any luck, the miners would have hit limestone at the end of that tunnel, and Ed would know he was nearby the caves Hale had spoken of earlier.

&

The map Al was supplied with was topographic, with the caves and shafts marked in red ink. Gathering up their suitcase and borrowing another oil lantern, he clanked away from the mining camp, studying the maps and choosing to ignore the guilty and hostile looks sent his way.

He had resolved that his best chance of finding his brother was to create another mine entrance. Hale had said there were nearby caves that had attracted tourists; maybe, if they were lucky, one of the natural caves jutted up next to the mining ones. But as he checked off the three caves most likely to yield results, he sighed unhappily. Was Brother alive? Al had to believe it, until all evidence pointed to the contrary. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do, in the end, which was an odd and somewhat depressing thought. He could spend weeks searching if he had to, even if he knew he would only find a body; he had no need for food, for drink, for sleep, for anything human.

Al rarely thought about it, when he was with Ed. His brother, needing all those things and mostly in large quantities, forced Alphonse to pause daily for meals and naps and more. It wasn't at all like doing them himself, but having a human routine helped Al feel human. Without Brother, Al could operate like a machine. And in this situation, he would do so, until it was no longer necessary.

&

The shaft was a long one, and Ed was feeling fatigue. It wasn't an experience he was familiar with. Most of the time, when he was tired he just went to bed; when he was hungry, he ate. When he threw himself into a project so completely he forgot about those things, he never noticed fatigue or hunger until Al was shaking his shoulder to rouse him from the book he was drooling into and his stomach was clawing his backbone. Right now all he could think about was putting one foot in front of the other and hoping the next bend would end in a wall of rough yellow-white stone. Oh, and not coughing. His throat was well beyond raw by this point. Thick though he could be about his own health, Ed knew it wasn't just the coal dust any more. He was sick. Probably just a cold, he reasoned – the obnoxious type that made your nose run until you ran out of tissues.

The oil lantern was on its last dregs, its light sputtering in and out when he finally found what he'd been looking for: a dead end. Unfortunately, it wasn't limestone, just some sort of gray granite, almost indistinguishable from the coal in color. He sighed, resting a hand on it and buckling to his knees. Dammit, there was no telling what could be behind this wall. It could be endless miles of stone; it could be pockets of sulfur; it could be only a few yards before he hit limestone, and a cave.

"Oh well," he said aloud into the silence, and the lamp flickered in response. He didn't have any other real options, did he? Other than wait until he had no light and died down here.

He clapped his hands together and pressed them to the wall, willing a tunnel to open into the bedrock. The reaction was a loud one – the receding stone cracked and heated against the steadfast, untouched rock, so the effect was like a small, localized earthquake. The ground vibrated under Ed's feet, and in front of him was a tunnel about twenty feet long. Ed picked up the lantern and his torches and walked down it.

Dead end. Oh well, try again, he told himself. The new tunnel was warm with the heat given off by the reacting stones, and beads of sweat accumulated on his forehead as he repeated the process again, and again, tunneling into the granite slowly and steadily.

Generally, Ed had endless stores of energy for alchemy. He didn't precisely understand how a reaction could exhaust a person, especially since the conduit for all alchemical energy seemed to be the Gate (the thought drew a grimace). But by the fifth time he attempted the reaction he was tired. Was he even going in the right direction? Picking new directions at random had no greater or worse chance of failure than the tunnel he was making now. If he wanted to illuminate more possibilities quickly, he was going to have to form a chamber – preferably a big one. And then hope the whole thing didn't collapse because he'd hit something he hadn't expected to hit.

He decided to go for it. Taking a deep breath, he clapped his hands together again and slammed them to the granite wall. Pressing the reaction, he forced it to continue onwards even after the rock under his fingers had disintegrated; he spread his hands, perspiring as he gave rise to a large, underground dome. As he stopped the transmutation, he listened for collapses, but he heard nothing. _Phew._

He smelled something foul as he walked forward to start again, at the same time, the oil lamp sputtered out.

"Damn it!" Ed swore loudly, throwing down the dead lantern and drawing up his shirt so he could breathe through the dust-coated collar. Sulfur! Coughing, he wheeled around in the complete dark to wait for the air to clear out a little, and banged his nose into the granite wall. "Ow!"

He put out a hand and steadied himself against said wall, tucking the torches into the crook of his arm while he stumbled out of his tunnel and back into the mining caves.

The air was clear of sulfur here, and Ed suspected that as long as he waited a bit – maybe gave the air a little alchemical stir – the toxic fumes would spread out enough that he could quickly tunnel away from them and avoid further trauma to his lungs. For the first time in a long time, Ed wished he'd done more than dabble in the physics of air transmutation. Sulfur, as a fume, didn't greatly interest him, but if he'd known more about its structure, he might have been able to clear the air with more than a stirring of air. In the meantime, closing his eyes against the darkness, he felt his tender nose. Didn't feel like he'd broken it; it would probably swell a little.

His breath rattled in his own ears, and he choked back another coughing fit. The air was cool here, he thought appreciatively, feeling out the granite wall and turning his back against it, sitting down heavily. He didn't need to light a torch right away; he'd just take a short break …

&

Al heard the rattling of his armor as the ground under his feet vibrated, and he looked down curiously. What had that been? He tilted his head and started forward again. He still had a good piece of ground to cover before he reached the nearest cave entrance.

"Hey!"

Al lifted his head and looked behind him. "Hmm?"

He was surprised to see Tym running after him, panting for breath. "We heard the collapse in the other tunnel," he gasped as he drew even to Al, leaning over his knees. "It … when I found out …"

"Please take a moment to catch your breath," Al suggested, looking down at him thoughtfully. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Tym panted, smiling weakly, slowly recovering. He straightened after a bit, wiping sweat from his coal-streaked forehead with a coal-streaked forearm. "I asked where you'd gone when I found out what had happened, and they pointed me after you. I figured you would … would look for the closest cave system …"

"Why did you come?" Al asked gently, appreciative of the gesture of simply following him out here.

"I wanted to help, if I can," Tym said, eyeing Al warily and nervously. "I … I'm not happy the Alchemist came, but if he's alive …" he trailed off.

"I understand." Al nodded, and turned to start back down the pathway. "I'm grateful for your help."

Tym nodded back, running a few steps to walk just behind Al. "Thank you," he said in a low voice, "for letting me help."


End file.
